Written at Town-end, Grasmere. The last line but two stood, at
first, better and more characteristically, thus:

"By my half-kitchen and half-parlour fire."

My Sister and I were in the habit of having the tea-kettle in our
little sitting-room; and we toasted the bread ourselves, which
reminds me of a little circumstance not unworthy of being set down
among these minutiae. Happening both of us to be engaged a few
minutes one morning when we had a young prig of a Scotch lawyer to
breakfast with us, my dear Sister, with her usual simplicity, put
the toasting-fork with a slice of bread into the hands of this
Edinburgh genius. Our little book-case stood on one side of the
fire. To prevent loss of time, he took down a book, and fell to
reading, to the neglect of the toast, which was burnt to a cinder.
Many a time have we laughed at this circumstance, and other
cottage simplicities of that day. By the bye, I have a spite at
one of this series of Sonnets (I will leave the reader to discover
which) as having been the means of nearly putting off for ever our
acquaintance with dear Miss Fenwick, who has always stigmatised
one line of it as vulgar, and worthy only of having been composed
by a country squire.